Disconnected: Expanded Edition

By Christopher Gajewski

In 2020, The Covid-19 pandemic swept across the world like a tsunami, uprooting the anchors that create our identities. With his marriage in shambles, Christopher Gajewski was already adrift. He had sold his business, listed his house, and planned to take refuge overseas-from what his friends and family called a midlife crisis.

 

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Christopher Gajewski
• Release date: Jun 1, 2023
• ISBN: 9781088040492

Christopher Gajewski

Christopher Gajewski was born in Philadelphia and raised in SW Philly, Springfield, PA and Rockville, MD. After graduating from Cardinal O'Hara High School in Springfield, he dawdled. He earned his Bachelor of Science in Communications, Journalism Concentration, from the University of Miami in Coral Gables, FL. His love of travel began when he did a semester abroad at the University of Glasgow in Scotland where he backpacked through Europe.Upon graduation, he dawdled again and life took him in different directions. He would eventually purchase an orthodontic laboratory. He founded a national association in 2017 to help labs struggling with the new technology and was named "The Educator" in The Journal of Dental Technology's "Hot List" in 2020. This made him fond of asking people, "Who's your hottie?"He currently resides, presumably, somewhere in North America. He can always be found on his website, www.thechrischronicles.com where he has turned his efforts towards mental health awareness.

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Introduction

Lockdown Boredom by the Fire

Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania

The 2020 Covid-19 pandemic caught me at a much different place than others. I was already adrift when the Covid tsunami swept across the globe, uprooting the anchors we all cling to in our daily lives. Before the world began its midlife crisis, I was already in the middle of mine.

At the beginning of 2019, with the pandemic a little more than a year away, I put things in motion to sell my business and home, yearning to disconnect from everything and go in search of the unknown. I asked both my wife and my business partner for a divorce. My wife took it better. 

During that year, after allowing work to consume me for decades, I began to take dips into the ocean that was America. Extended weekends away from my home in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, became the new normal, and so did relearning how to pack a suitcase and wander into distant places alone.

Family and friends thought I was going crazy—or having a midlife crisis. They may have been right. Fifty was creeping up on me, and if it waddles like a duck and quacks like a duck... 

But what if it wasn’t a duck? 

What the hell was I doing? 

I was running away from home. There was the business I had built up over 15 years and the career for the last 30, the dream house, a troubled marriage to a beautiful woman, and the easy comfort of friends and family that surrounded me.

I was burned out. It was a tired, soul-wearied exhaustion that seeped into everything, propelling me to start exploring for something outside my familiar life.

Plan A was a very long sabbatical. There was no Plan B. Plan A was so broad there was no need for a Plan B. The profits from selling my business would start me off on a two-week family trip to Poland at the end of April 2020. Then in May, on to a rented apartment in Pescara, Italy, and one on Milos, an island off the coast of Greece in July. Afterward, I would backpack and wander the world until my money or my back gave out.

The business finally sold at the end of December 2019. A large portion of that money went to helping my wife buy a new house. We exchanged the down payment for the expected proceeds of our current place. With our home on the market and plans to be somewhere in Europe when it sold, I got rid of everything. I gave her all she wanted and was not even sure if I was coming back.

What was left of my possessions, I sold what I could, gave away what I couldn’t, and donated the rest to charity. The declined donations found their way into a dumpster. At the beginning of February 2020, all that remained was a bed, a television, a sofa, a coffee table, a chair in front of the fireplace, and my coffee maker.

There was nothing on the walls. My stepdaughter had been the artist, and the art gallery of her paintings and photography all went to their new home. The small pictures and art collected during my bachelor years and relegated to my office were now in a small 5x5 rented storage area with the few personal effects left. 

I closed off the unused parts of the 4,000 sq. ft. house with three floors and five bedrooms, so the echoes of emptiness wouldn’t taunt me as much. Instead, the chair in front of the fireplace became the most used piece of furniture during a winter that seemed to cling to the northeast longer than usual.

In early March 2020, I coughed on board a flight that would be my last one before the lockdown. As I continued to cough on the plane returning from Ft. Myers, Florida, other passengers turned around and stared. Finally remembering the reports coming out of China, I held up my pack of cigarettes to show people I was only killing myself and not them.

Sitting in my empty house through March, eagerly awaiting the mid-April departure to Europe, more information started coming from China, Italy, Greece, and Poland. I watched red dots of virus hot stops overlaying a map on my computer. The dots began to blossom and spread. The area around Pescara, Italy, was first. They kept expanding until it engulfed Europe and all international tourist travel was prohibited.

So much for Plan A.

Yes, I took the damn pandemic personally. Aye, I’ve lived an absurd kind of life and can be an absurd kind of person. The final ridiculousness came at the beginning of April: Governor Tom Wolf of Pennsylvania, in all his glory and wisdom, made PA the only state where homes could not be bought or sold.

The For Sale sign on my front lawn was taken down and stored away in the empty four-car garage.

I was screwed.

Instead of packing a couple of suitcases to join my family on a four-city bus tour of Poland, I was sitting in front of the fireplace contemplating Murphy’s Law: Anything that can go wrong will go wrong, and at the worst possible time. Instead of learning first-hand the Italian decency laws for stripping out of clothes and diving into the ocean, I just wanted the universe to leave me the hell alone.

Whether or not it was a midlife crisis, I had earned it. I had worked hard for it. I had dedicated my entire life to it. I had survived train wrecks, hurricanes, and a multitude of other disasters to arrive at this final absurdity.

Now, the world at large was joining me in this absurdity. As I deconstructed my life, disrobing from the many titles of husband, business owner, son, and brother, the American government was deconstructing truth, science, and masking reality.

An unknown virus named Covid-19 was sweeping the globe. Death tolls were mounting with stories of overrun hospitals and doctors having to decide who lived and who died for lack of equipment to treat everybody. Respirators were being saved for the most likely to survive.

Was it all true? 

In 2016, with the election of Donald Trump as the 45th president of the United States, America had become more fractured than ever. Moderates like myself were drowned out in the cacophony from the extreme left and right. Before Covid-19 and nasal swabs entered our vernacular, other phrases like alternate facts and fake news were also invading our peace.

My hospital isn’t overrun, I heard a lot. 

 Those overwhelmed hospitals and bodies are all staged by the radical left-wing press so the government can take away our freedoms. 

 Everybody who dies now is being called a victim of Covid. 

It was everywhere. Marginalized conspiracy theories were taking center stage and amplified by social media. Respected news organizations and journalists had been under attack since Trump began his bid for the White House in 2015. In one primary debate, he used the National Enquirer to blast one of his Republican opponents. Between stories of UFO sightings and naked celebrities, there was an article about Senator Ted Cruz’s family connection with the JFK assassination. 

You can’t believe anything you see on those channels, I was told, as they guided me to watch such and such for the real facts. Of course, the such and such were radical right-wing tabloids with no relationship to the truth or journalism but neck-deep in national and worldwide conspiracies.

I turned off the television.

Respected newspapers such as The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal were being dismissed because they were not following the left or right radical party lines.

So, what you are saying, I asked a friend of mine, is that the pandemic is actually a conspiracy orchestrated by George Soros, the Democratic Party, and 187 countries around the world to make President Trump look bad for his reelection bid?

Well, yes, he replied.

Personally, everybody was to blame. Yes, I am a moderate and damn proud of it. But, in all good conspiracy theories, there are kernels of truth. Was the press a mouthpiece for the far left? Was the rise of the far right and nationalism just a reaction to the radical agenda of the left? I could even go farther back and discuss the erosion of critical thinking skills due to a test-based culture that was expunging art and music from our elementary schools.

A perfect storm descended upon America, and I was adrift in my little dinghy.

I couldn’t care less anymore. 

All I knew was I needed toilet paper.

Part One: Struggling in Lockdown

A House that Became a Home

Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania

On Pause: April 3, 2020

The world was hushed… on pause, with no idea how long it would last.

We entered a new reality of masks, social distancing, lockdowns, and isolation. International travel was banned, and even domestic flying was restricted to essential travelers. The world’s economy ground to a screeching halt.

On March 19, California became the first state to issue a stay-at-home order. The rest of the states would soon follow, Delaware on March 24 and Pennsylvania on April 1.

    Nursing and retirement homes became prisons, with each resident in solitary confinement. Visitors were also not allowed into hospitals to help prevent the spread of the virus.

    I remember one story a woman posted on Facebook about visiting her father with dementia. She would always take him home for the weekend and now could only see him through thick glass. He had no idea what was happening and was in tears.

What did I do wrong, he cried. I promise not to do it again.

Countries like Spain instituted national lockdowns in which people were not allowed to leave their homes and could be arrested if they didn’t have a doctor’s note.

    I was bored and wondering what to do with myself.

    By the end of February, I had helped my wife move into her new home and was left sitting alone in a mostly empty house. I did ask her for some things back, but that didn’t go so well. Apparently, everything was still packed up. However, she did give me a comforter—the one the dogs had shredded.

    Lamps are essential when you don’t have any. Knives are useful, and so are pots and pans. I had hoped for a quick end to the pandemic but was now forced to start spending money. With no idea how long we would be stuck inside, shopping became something to do. The big-box stores were considered essential, and you could enter them with masks. Large, red Xs taped on the floor told you where to stand while in the checkout line. Target, Walmart, Home Depot, and the grocery stores became part of my new morning routine.

    My friends thought it was hilarious because I don’t do mornings. Aside from boot camp at 18, I had always set my own hours. For decades, it felt normal to start the day when my friends were on their lunch break. But, now that we could sleep in, I couldn’t and was waking up each morning at about 5 AM, waiting for the stores to open.

    I became a scavenger.

    I still have no idea why toilet paper became scarce. I could understand cleaning supplies, hand sanitizers, or over-the-counter medications, but toilet paper? What did Covid have to do with bowel movements? Friends and family were either afraid to enter stores or their jobs limited when they could go. As a result, I was there to help. The best time to find the coveted provisions was as soon as shops opened. I even got the lowdown on what days they received new shipments.

    Each store quickly instituted policies; only two per customer of items in short supply. By mid-morning, my Subaru Outback SUV was loaded with toilet paper, napkins, paper towels, and anything else I could find along the various stops. By the afternoon, the Outback was empty, and the supplies had been placed on people’s doorsteps.

I would knock on the door and step back a few feet. They opened with a mask on, thanked me while keeping their distance, and brought everything inside to wipe down with bleach.

I kept one package of toilet paper in a closet, waiting for the call.

I phoned my dad one day from Target. Do you need toilet paper?

I’m getting low, he said.

I’m at Target now. I can grab you a 12-pack.

What kind, he asked. 

Dad, there is a pandemic. Nobody can find toilet paper. I can. Do you want some or not?

Is it Charmin?

Yes, it’s Charmin.

Is it the extra soft?

I scanned the few packages in the almost empty aisle.

No, just the soft.

I’ll be okay, he said.

I picked it up anyway. My dad eventually called, and I dropped it off on his porch in South Philly.

In the afternoons, I became an electrician. When we moved into our house seven years prior, my wife had everything repainted—from earth tones and reds to teals, azures, and whites. The ivory-colored outlet switches and wall plates had always bothered me, so I decided to stock up on white ones from Home Depot. Do you know how many outlets there are in a 4,000 sq. ft. house? Over 100! 

Aye, it kept me busy for a few weeks.

I also added bootlegger to my resume. Chadds Ford, PA, is about 10 minutes from Delaware and 20 minutes from Maryland. I never understood why beer stores stayed open, but the liquor and wine stores (state regulated) closed earlier. What could be more essential than wine and liquor when you are stuck at home 24/7 with people you might love but are only used to seeing a few hours a day? 

My people needed their booze—it was a mission of mercy. I had an in in Delaware, where state troopers were now stopping people from out of state after decades of unlimited access. Though ignored, it is technically illegal to transport liquor across state lines. Yet, Pennsylvanians had been buying it there tax-free for as long as anyone can remember— until the pandemic.

I was on the mortgage papers for my wife’s new house in Delaware and kept them on my front seat while traveling the back roads on my liquor store runs. 

My friends thought it was hilarious since I didn’t really drink a lot. So now, on any given day, my Outback was filled with cases of vodka, rum, various wines, and anything else someone would request. Captain Morgan became my co-pilot.

Yet, at the end of each day, it was always an empty SUV in the garage and me sitting in front of the fireplace in silence. 

Wondering. 

Thinking.

I did not like this new reality, the deafening silence, the echoes of my footsteps in the house.

My life was supposed to be in motion towards faraway beaches, not on pause.

Could some of the songs in my head please pause? Don Henley, in particular, was pissing me off. Whether it was a midlife crisis, an intervention by the Universe, or Murphy screwing with me again, Don Henley’s New York Minute had created the prelude to all of this.

I loved the song, but it also scared the living hell out of me since I had first heard it. As a junior in college, it had felt like a foreshadowing, a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. I was a writer trying to balance two worlds. But unfortunately, Harry from Henley’s song was not doing so well. First, he crossed the line and got lost, and then they found his clothing scattered down the train tracks.

I had been on the verge of escaping this mess to scatter my clothes somewhere along an Italian beach, diving into the surf to reach for that other world that had gotten so far away from me. Covid had transformed an eagerly awaited journey into a figment of my imagination. I wondered if the Italian police tase naked beachgoers coming out of the surf.

Now, the Universe had put up a no entry sign on that other world, along with countries and US states. I toasted Don Henley’s Harry as I sipped coffee and stared into the crackling flames. 

A Surge of Music: May 7, 2020

I didn’t do well today with the stay-at-home order. Not quite sure where I am, but it’s not home. Am I somewhere in northeast Pennsylvania? Everybody who knows me—former teachers, drill sergeants, and employers—know I don’t do well with staying still. But all of this is a bit different. It’s clamping down on me, particularly at night. 

For a while, I had felt the music come back. It surges when I am driving as if life has a soundtrack. The playlist fled when Covid rounded the bend to escape a head-on collision. I can only do so much electrical work and landscaping to get through the days. At night, the depression clamps down on me again. From what I am reading on Facebook, it seems to be clamping down on everybody.

A while back, in the span of four years, the three people I was closest to in high school passed away. In between, I lost my mother, aunts, and uncles. And then there was the decade before when I lost a lot of people who still walk this earth. Life gets overwhelming at times, and in a blink, chunks of it are gone.

I’ve always said the greatest gift of youth is immortality. I had all the time in the world and felt invincible. As the years passed, I shed that protective shell until I was left staring at something incomprehensible. Now, I’m staring at the walls of the house I was supposed to sell, at the map of Italy where I was supposed to finally be happy and maxing out my credit cards—the ones I used to refurnish the house I just unfurnished.

As the depression holds me underwater, I thrash for air, staring again at bleakness.

The music tells me it is not real.

The opening sequence in The Rundown is the greatest of any movie. Dwayne The Rock Johnson enters a club where his target is with his crew of college football players. He tries to be polite, but the quarterback isn’t playing nice. Backed by his teammates, he refuses to give up his championship ring as collateral. 

You can give me the ring, or I can make you give me the ring, says Johnson.

Ultimately, he had to beat the hell out of them to get it. Once outside the club, one of Johnson’s competitors shoots him with a bean bag gun and steals his prize. 

Man makes plans, and God laughs.

I think the Universe’s sense of humor is worse than mine.

I needed to go for a drive, and not just to the big-box stores.

Everything screams quarantines, lockdowns, shutdowns, and social distancing! Stay six feet away from everybody. Even the stores have one-way aisles. Stay as safe as possible because death is everywhere.

I don’t. 

I can’t.

I see pods forming of safe circles. So they can still socialize, everybody must trust those in their pod to be virus free. Others are ignoring Covid and creating super spreader events. I read a story from Texas where, despite all the warnings, someone threw a surprise party. It was quite a surprise when someone killed grandma and grandpop.

I just sit in my empty house. It’s ironic because I probably see friends and family more than I ever have. I regularly go to stores and mingle with the other scavengers for goods. That makes me a welcome sight for a hello—from a distance. Hugs are out. I miss my hugs. People are afraid, and I don’t blame them.

Maybe if I had stuck with the stay-at-home order, I would have been allowed into somebody’s pod. But I didn’t. I made the decision, hung the bell around my neck, and now walk through the world; Unclean, unclean, the bell tolls. Who knows? Covid-19 is a mystery virus that scientists and the CDC are still trying to figure out. Do the masks really work? How long and how much Covid-19 exposure makes you a carrier? As loved ones don’t want me too close, I don’t want to be too close to them. The CDC is explicit on one fact: you can be a carrier and not show any symptoms. I’d rather not kill anybody accidentally. 

 Masthope, up in the Poconos mountains of Pennsylvania, is about two and a half hours north of Philadelphia. One of my oldest friends, Papa Bear Mike, has invited me to his family’s vacation home for the past three years. It offers a lake and fishing for warm days, sledding, skiing, and bonfires for cold nights. But unfortunately, with work and life, I could never make it up there. Now, I am not welcome. 

The family is in quarantine, and I would not think of intruding. Mike’s wife, Liz, is a special person, always welcoming and warm with an easy smile. But now, with the pandemic, she is a mamma bear on patrol protecting her three cubs. I respect that. 

Nevertheless, I needed a destination and, quite frankly, was bored. So I took some photos of the Masthope sign, then sat in what I imagine passes for the town center to send them to Liz. I would have stopped and waved from their front yard, but they wouldn’t give me the address.

My warped sense of humor gets me into trouble all the time; and has my entire life. The depression gets me into worse trouble, and has my entire life.

No, Mamma Bear, I’m not intruding. I desperately needed to go for a long drive, so the music could surge inside me and push back the darkness for a little while. It’s a long ride back home to stare at the walls of an empty house. 

I headed back home with my Driving playlist, which offers a good three hours of great songs from various genres. I thought about stretching the drive out to two and a half hours or maybe doing a 10-hour jaunt to the Maine/Canadian border with the music urging me onward.

A new destination is very appealing, but I won’t be welcome in Canada or any state I pass through. Yet, after having been at the southern end of Interstate 95 dozens of times, seeing the northern end would be interesting—in a geeky kind of way.

The Simmering Pot: May 9, 2020

The motto of the infantry is Follow me! 

Yeah, don’t do that. If we are all in the same boat, put me on a little schooner alone. I see Niagara Falls ahead and think this could be fun. Do you still want to follow me?

Hold my beer coffee and watch this.

I wanted to write about that simmering pot and how we are all in the same boat. Yesterday, a couple of Facebook posts caught my attention, reminding me of a conversation I just had with one of my cousins. 

The basic gist was, I’m having a really shitty day and have no idea why.

I know why. The American Psychological Association knows why and my neighbor who owns a string of psych services knows why—as he makes money hand over fist.

Whether that boat is heading towards Niagara Falls or just down a lazy river, we shouldn’t be in the damn boat. It’s unnatural. When the lockdown started, it was like turning the burner on simmer under a pot of stew with the lid on. Our brains are the stew. My range top shows the effects of what happens if you let stuff simmer for too long—I’ll scrub it all up eventually.

I’m an old pro at this, battle-hardened. I’ve had that flame on high for large stretches of my life. One psychologist mentioned he felt as if I lived my first 30 years in fight or flight mode. Imagine what that does to the body, not to mention the mind. My bad days are a bit different than most. I’ve learned to adapt and work through it, but now Covid is weakening my superpowers. 

Bad days, for no reason, go hand in hand with the total inability to know what day it is, or month or hour. Is it nap time yet? 

Herb, a psychiatrist friend and a true battle-hardened veteran with multiple tours in Afghanistan, explained how we have all lost our anchors. Things like going to work, the weekly get-together with friends, or even haircut appointments, kept us anchored to our lives and our identities.

Me? I started this lockdown with absolutely no idea who the hell I was. Then last year, I stripped out of my identity, with the final piece flying off at the beginning of February, as I helped my wife move into her new home and new life. Perfect timing.

I’m just tired. A long time ago in West Philadelphia, a friend mentioned that it seemed as if I had lived ten years for every one we get. Another pal recently said I had lived more in half my life than many do in four lifetimes. If you do the math, I think I’m 637. 

I feel like an old, old man, rocking in my chair with the stew on simmer, listening to the hiss of the boilover hitting the hot steel of the stovetop.

Several months ago, that stew had the promising aroma of an Italian beach. Now it smells overcooked and inedible. I wonder if there is anything left in my tank that has not yet been stripped away by the years? I wish to recapture what time has taken from me—maybe get back to 49. 

Nowadays, especially at night, as I sit staring at the walls of this house, it smells like an old age home. Equal parts of antiseptic and bleach, with the occasional whiffs of the flowers young people bring to their grandparents on special occasions.

But that’s just the depression talking. The incessant whispers that mock me at night are just trash talk. Meaningless, pointless, and forgotten like the mists that burn away with the rising sun. Maybe that’s why I wake up at sunrise. 

We can start to believe anything is normal if we live it long enough. Consciously we think it’s natural but our subconscious is that simmering pot. It knows better. We'll start grinding the hell out of our teeth at night, have bad dreams, or possibly panic attacks. The fun ones are the panic attacks that leave me sprawled on the floor, gasping for air. 

We’re going to have crummy days for no reason whatsoever—but there is a reason.

This shit ain’t normal.

Hell, I have to be honest. Perhaps my boat was already going over the falls, and the pandemic pulled it back.